e blocked by Northern men-of-war. Little
news from the fortress escaped; the world had a sense of gigantic grey
figures moving here and there behind a great battle veil, of a push
against the fortress, a push from all sides, with approved battering
rams, scaling ladders, hooks, grapples, mines, of blue figures, all
known and described in heroic terms by the Northern public prints, a
push repelled by the voiceless, printless, dimly-discerned grey figures.
Not that the grey, too, were not described to the nations in the prints
above. They were. The wonder was that the creatures could fight--even,
it appeared, fight to effect. Around and over the wide-flung fortress
the battle smoke rolled and eddied. Drums were distantly heard, now
rallying, now muffled. A red flag with a blue cross rose and fell and
rose again; grey names emerged, floated, wraith-like, over the sea, not
to be stopped by blue men-of-war, names and picturesque nicknames, loved
of soldiers. It grew to be allowed that there must be courage in the
fortress, and a gift of leadership. All was seen confusedly, but with a
mounting, mounting interest. The world gaped at the far-borne clang and
smoke and roar. Military men in clubs demonstrated to a nicety just how
long the fortress might hold out, and just how it must be taken at last.
Schoolboys fought over again in the schoolyards the battles with the
heathenish names. The Emperor of the French and the King of Prussia and
the Queen of Spain and the Queen of England and the Czar and the Sultan
and the Pope at Rome asked each morning for the war news, and so did
gaunt cotton-spinners staring in mill towns at tall smokeless chimneys.

Early in June Halleck was appointed commander-in-chief of all the armies
of the United States. What to do with McClellan, at present summering on
the James twenty-five miles below Richmond, came upon the board.
McClellan claimed, quite rightly, that here and now, with his army on
both sides of the James, he held the key position, and that with
sufficient reinforcements he could force the evacuation of Richmond.
Only give him reinforcements with which to face Lee's "not less than two
hundred thousand!" Recall the Army of the Potomac, and it might be some
time before it again saw Richmond! Halleck deliberated. General Pope had
come out of the west to take concentrated command of the old forces of
Banks, Sigel, Fremont, and McDowell. He had an attitude, had Pope, at
the head of his forty